Art auction sales decline

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Ned Kelly by Sidney Nolan - one of 49 Nolan works that sold
for a total of $1.2 million.

After a decade of soaring sales, Australia's booming art market
is cooling.

The nation's art auctioneers enjoyed an almost four-fold rise in
turnover from the early 1990s to 2003 when sales hit a record $92
million.

But last year the total was down by more than $5 million and
another fall seems certain this year.

Turnover has just touched $58 million, so auction houses will
struggle to raise the extra $30 million needed to exceed last
year's total.

Sotheby's is ahead of the other two big auction houses, with
sales of almost $24 million to the end of last month. But the
American-owned firm fell behind Deutscher-Menzies last year, after
exceeding the Australian firm's turnover and that of Christie's for
each of the previous five years.

Deutscher Menzies found buyers for $30.2 million worth of art
last year, compared with Sotheby's $21.3 million and Christie's
$15.8 million. The smaller auction houses, now more numerous and
competitive, generated sales of almost $19 million.

Christie's has only beaten the other two big houses twice in the
past 10 years and is trailing its main competitors again. On Monday
night, the firm held its late-winter art auction in Melbourne, but
it was clear it would be a relatively quiet affair.

Instead of a room packed with people, there were plenty of seats
for collectors. But bidding was spirited for quality paintings that
were fresh to the market - although finding such works is posing
serious problems for all the auctioneers.

Christie's managed to sell 60 per cent of the 363 lots for a
total of $3.66 million. But $1.2 million came from the sale of 49
works by Sidney Nolan, of which 45 were from the collection of a
friend of Nolan's, the late English artist Gordon House.

The House paintings and prints generated $723,350, including
Christie's hefty buyer's premium and GST. But it was a 1948 Nolan
of grass trees belonging to another collector that achieved the top
price of $265,540.

Bidding was spirited for quality paintings that were fresh to the market.

First prize, however, went to a 1910 painting by Fred McCubbin
of Kensington Road, South Yarra, that was sold to a telephone
bidder for $333,460.

The picture had been handed down in the family and not seen
before at auction.

Buyers are clearly still there for such works, but they are
becoming more cautious about bidding for pictures that in the past
were traded like shares in a rising market.